Ahmed Fouad Negm

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Ahmed Fouad Negm, (born May 22, 1929, Kafr Abu Negm, Egypt—died Dec. 3, 2013, Cairo, Egypt), Egyptian dissident poet who inspired generations of Egyptians with his slangy, sometimes crude poems in which he described the struggles of the working class and lampooned the excesses of Egypt’s political leaders. Negm’s verse, written in colloquial Arabic, became a rallying cry for many protesters, and in 2011 young Egyptians chanted lines from his poem “Who Are They, and Who Are We?” during public demonstrations in Cairo against Pres. Hosni Mubarak. Negm’s disdain for authority put him in constant conflict with the government, however, and during his life he spent a total of 18 years in jail. Negm had little formal education and worked as a labourer on a military base and then as a street vendor until he was imprisoned (1959) for the first time for fraud. He began to write in prison, composing the poems that were later collected as Suwar min al-hayah wa al-sijn (1962; “Pictures from Life and Prison”). He collaborated for some two decades with singer-composer Sheikh Imam, who set Negm’s work to music. Negm in 2007 was named a UN “ambassador of the poor.”

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